Hawke's Bay

We have spent the past two weeks in the Hawke's Bay area, on the east coast.  We are staying with the White family who own a 1400 acre farm 20 minutes south of Hastings (which is just south of Napier).  They raise and sell calves and lambs as well as grow things like squash, corn, peas, barley. They also have vacation accommodation in a 'farmstay' near the house. This is our first farm stay. They have a 4 bedroom home with a tennis court, pool and nice gardens.  We're staying in the upstairs bedroom with the most comfortable bed we've had so far on our travels... sure beats sleeping in the van!

View from the back deck across the farm

Evie!

Farm stay

Sheep Sheep Sheep

Sheep shearing

We have been doing a lot of different jobs here. We do 4-5 hours per day.  We have been doing lots of gardening, cleaning the house (laundry, vacuuming, cleaning cabinets/ceilings), baking, firewood, and Chris even helped with the sheep. The White's daughter, who also lives here, owns a cafe a couple miles down the road.  We have been helping out over there too, painting and gardening and I (Weslie) have been working a little bit in the cafe and is learning to make kiwi coffee. Helping out with the food is fun too, prepping steak/kidney pies, toasted sandwiches, making tortillas, pastries, and icing cakes.

The Paper Mulberry Cafe

Mowing

Inside the Cafe

Kiwi Coffee

Lemon Squares

It's a lot of fun, it's kind of hard to explain the differences between coffee here and at home-- no drip/filter coffee, just espresso, much smaller sizes, and pretty standard sizes for the drinks too- short/long blacks are in demitasse cups, flat white/cappuccino in cups maybe 8 oz, lattes/hot chocolate/chai/americanos in cups up to 12 oz or so. All seem to come with a double shot, and IF they have flavors available, it's maybe just vanilla or maybe caramel. That's pretty much the coffee menu you'll find in any cafe. Prices are pretty standard too, $3.50 for tea or long black, $4- flat white, 4.50-latte.  So if you like frappuccinos (ew), you're out of luck! :)  I'm going to get to work at the cafe more while we're here, too- for real money, too! Not a lot of hours, but one or two days a week and also while she's out of town in August.

We have done a couple things around the area including a day in Napier where we went to the National Aquarium and saw the penguins and sharks being fed.  We also went on a 14km hike to the gannet colony on Cape Kidnappers only to discover that they spend the winter in Australia; it was still a nice hike as we got a day devoid of wind.  We also got to see that the motor camp near the cape is slowly being washed away; the road is already unusable except for 4-wheelers and bikes.  We also took a quick trip to Te Mata, a peak in Havelock North, just southwest of Hastings.

Walk to see Gannets 

Beginning of our hike to Cape Kidnappers

Whoops...

Motorcamp's road got washed out

Aquarium

Shark feeder

Views from Te Mata

We are also going to repaint the farmstay accommodation, and we'll be getting some paid hours for that also.  We should be here for another couple of weeks, and then through August we will be house sitting for some friends of theirs, just over the hill from here.